Larry Flynt puts up $1 million for Perry dirt

Larry Flynt and his Hustler Magazine are offering $1 million to anyone who can document a gay or straight sexual relationship with Gov. Rick Perry.

Flynt has made the offer in a full-page ad running in the current Austin Chronicle.

The ad also will run Friday in the Onion, a national publication using satire to make light of current events.

Flynt said his office hears considerable chatter about Perry’s private life.

“That’s the reason why we decided to run the ad; otherwise we wouldn’t do it,” Flynt said Thursday. “We hope to get leads. If we do, we have good investigators to put on the story.”

Perry campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan said Perry’s team “will decline to weigh in on this garbage.”

Whispers about Perry’s private life have circulated for years. In 2004, the governor sat down with an Austin American-Statesman reporter to deny all of the rumors.

Hustler Magazine’s newspaper ad offers up to $1 million in cash to anyone who can provide “evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with the governor.”

“You never know what’s going to break. You never know which way it’s going to break,” Flynt said. “But the thing about is, they usually all have something to hide.”

Hustler Magazine will determine what material it will publish. Payment of the cash award will hinge on the magazine’s use of the material “and mutual agreement prior to publication,” according to the smaller print in the ad.

Robert Morrow of Austin bought a full-page ad in the Austin Chronicle last month when he asked anyone who has had sex with Perry to contact him.

“I got dozens of phone calls and over a hundred emails, plus that fact that it went viral on the internet and got gargantuan amounts of publicity for my exposure of Rick Perry,” Morrow said.

The ad triggered about “10 to 15 good leads,” he said.

Morrow figures the $1 million offer could motivate people to talk publicly.

“Now, there is no reason for these primary sources to not come public and tell the unfortunate, ugly truth about this selfish man. I guarantee you Larry Flynt will get some good sources about Rick Perry’s rampant adultery from this ad,” Morrow said.